No idea how much spent on Food

I seem to be the only one who doesn’t mind supermarket shopping as I go most days. I live near several supermarkets and walk past after work. I find it more efficient as I just get what I need for that night/couple of nights so v little is wasted or goes off.
Costs about £700-800 per month two adults, two teens no pets. Plus maybe £100 on eating out. I always keep a rough mental tally - just because I like to know.

I set up a saving space on mine and put £10 in it every day I take my breakfast and lunch into work. I've got the clear glass containers and plastic lids you can get on Amazon. My colleagues are like "Ooh- what have you got today?" Stevie Neil on Blue Lights made me laugh so much in recognition, with his bento boxes.

Most online banking apps categorise spending now. It’s not 100% accurate but gives you a vague idea how much you’ve spent on groceries, for example.

My Starling bank app tells me how much I spend on food, whether I want it to or not 🤣

why dont you just set up a spreadsheet @Aquarius1234

Why don’t you try just doing one main shop this week?

OP, your attitude to the helpful advice here has been rather flippant.
But at the risk of getting a glib response from you, why not try the Kakeibo notebook method? Writing your everyday expenses down on paper according to category and target expenditure helps with mindfulness.
It works for me because I also enjoy spending time using high quality pens and paper.

I realise how lucky we are. We didn't feel different for the 1st 4 years as he had to pay into the company for his promotion, which, at the time, took most of the wage increase. However, this last year, he's been paying into pensions as we never had the money to do so before, so we don't have any provisions for retirement, and that's now his focus.

@Aquarius1234 Do you want to change and be more aware of what you're spending?

@Aquarius1234 YANBU. I used to budget to the penny, and had booklets for keeping track, etc, but found it stressful when my dh wouldn't curb his spending on stuff we didn't need and couldn't really afford at that time.

About 7 years ago, I handed over the financial stuff to my dh so that I wasn't so stressed and I no longer check our bank accounts, etc, so I generally have no idea what is in it or what we spend as it just made me too anxious.

Five years ago my dh was promoted and now, comfortably brings home 6 figures, so we don't need to worry about what we spend on food.

I'm still a bargain hunter due to the many years we had no money, and I struggle to spend money on stuff that isn't essential, but until just now I had no idea what we really spend on food and pets and cleaning supplies, etc.

I do like to buy a bargain when I see it, eg, if meat or something is on offer, but I've always shopped like that.

I've just looked over the last 3 months accounts, and we spend around £72/week on food and other groceries.
Then £10.50/ week on dog food, which I buy quarterly.
Then about £5-8/week on fish food, and I buy meat when it's on offer from either the supermarkets or the local butcher, eg, a whole lamb in Spring, so it may be that one week I spend £150 on meat on top of my normal shop.

I would say this means that my weekly total grocery bill, including all pets, etc, and meat comes to a maximum of £100-120 per week on average.

I do meal plan and cook from scratch. I do not really buy brands, and we rarely have takeaways. We eat out maybe once a quarter, which isn't included in this.

I feel guilty that I don't need to budget in the same way anymore, but I still do worry about money sometimes, and I hate waste.

But why won’t you add up? What’s stopping you from sitting down with banking app open and jotting down a month or twos worth of shops on a bit of paper. Will take less time than responding here?

Habits aren’t necessarily people being smug or tight. For me I want fun and frivolity so have no choice but to meal plan and shop around. We live near lots of little versions of the main shops, but no way would I live out of them as they’re overpriced. I get masses of tins/dried/toilet rolls etc from asda about once every month or two. Weekly Ocado as the minimum spend is low for me. The same day ocado comes I go to the market for fruit and veg. Ocado I get meat on multi buy offers and freeze. If towards the end of the week I need top ups of fruit and herbs I go to the little Waitrose if I can’t get to the market. That’s it. It’s not massively complicated and when people say they can’t be bothered, I wonder how they can be bothered to constantly go to the shop?

Meal planning doesn’t have to be that big of a deal especially if you freeze meat, have a microwave, and have a good stock of herbs and sauces etc. I also always have emergency micro rice and mash in the freezer etc. today I’ve got sausages out the freezer this morning, which I’ve put in with an onion cut side down in the oven, mash out the freezer is going in the microwave, and peas and Bisto. I’m not running to the shop and dawdling looking and thinking.

Yesterday we had vegetable fried rice with lots of eggs and a Thai salad on the side, used the coriander left from the day before chili con carne, and the leftover rice. I have all the condiments and cooking sauces for it.

@LaCouleurDeMonCiel where I know excatly what my household bills are / too much lol

I agree, it’s all coming across a bit dim.

Hmm no it’s coming across less that she’s rich and more that she is revelling in being a bit dim. Perhaps that’s the look she’s going for but it’s not how an adult would normally operate.

I wondered that. Seems strange not to check the receipt to make sure you've not been overcharged. I've many times had to point out offers/discounts that havn't been applied, or where the till price has differed from the pack/shelf marked price.

Don't you look at how much you're paying at the till/ online basket ?

Sometimes, not always. I tend to buy what we need for the week on a Saturday morning from the farm shop (I pop in while the kids are at swimming lessons). I only tend to freeze it if plans have changed and we eat out instead of having what we bought, for example.

I can tell if I look at my Monzo app. It is really useful for things like this. Apparently we’ve spent £258.11 so far this month.

No I don’t think many people do, must be nice to have the kind of life you don’t need to worry and brag about it. My 7 yr old DD had to put something back the other day as we couldn’t afford it in the weekly shop budget ( more expensive yoghurts) I felt awful.